Blind girl in a house versus a gang of hoodlums.
No, it’s not Wait Until Dark, with Audrey Hepburn, who had to make due without a cell phone.
The protagonist in See For Me, is Sophie Scott (Skyler Davenport), an Olympic level skier who lost her sight—and seemingly her moral compass.
In order to get out from under a suffocating mother (Natalie Brown), Sophie develops a side hustle as a pet sitter for rich people, only too happy to help out an Olympic prospect down on her luck.
And so what if Sophie steals an item or two that surely won’t be missed, and splits the profits with her fence? As she herself points out, “Who would suspect the little blind girl?”
Her latest client is Debra (Laura Vandervoort), a recent divorcee with custody of a remote and massive mansion in the hills that features floor-to-ceiling glass, a solarium, a wine cellar, and $7 million in cash sitting in a safe behind a painting.
Though somewhat reluctant to hand over the keys of an ultra-modern, gazillion-dollar palace to Helen Keller, Debra debriefs Sophie on the alarm system and heads out the door.
Sadly for Sophie, she isn’t the only one with the bright idea of ripping off this piggy bank. Three hardened criminals working for a remote boss gain access to the house while she sleeps.
Fortunately, there’s an app for that.
The resourceful Sophie uses a service called See For Me, that connects visually impaired folks in distress with sighted volunteers. So she skulks about the house holding her phone in front of her so that Kelly (Jessica Parker Kennedy), an Iraqi war veteran, can guide her away from danger.
That’s the plan, anyway, but director Randall Okita keeps Sophie consistently in harm’s way (and our pulses racing) with one increasingly far-fetched development after another, none greater than the plucky blind girl herself.
Instead of a puddle of shrieking victimhood, Sophie not only picks herself up after enduring a highly unlikely barrage of obstacles, she seizes opportunity when it presents itself, and finds a way to come out ahead, as revealed in a satisfyingly unexpected conclusion.
Come for the breathless thrills, stay for the crafty anti-heroine.
Editor’s note: See For Me is based on a real application called Be My Eyes, and my wife is a volunteer. She actually got a call from a man who needed someone to read the buttons on his dishwasher during the movie!
I’m just glad it wasn’t an emergency.
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